in the colony of capital drawn from abroad, the plentiful and cheap convict labour, and the absence of all external competition, favoured the landed proprietors, who rapidly waxed rich and powerful. But all this was the result of political, and therefore temporary, arrangements; it was essentially artificial, and at the first breath of change it crumbled away. Two great events for Tasmania occurred at nearly the same time -the cessation of transportation, and with it of Government expenditure; and the discovery of gold in Victoria. The first was not felt at the moment, for the additional market opened in Victoria far more than counterbalanced the loss of Government expenditure. For a little while Tasmania made great profits, and a splendid future seemed opening before her; but this prosperity was illusory and shortlived. Victoria soon began to supply her own wants; and as she could do this, with her great natural resources, much more advantageously than Tasmania could, the Tasmanians' market was rapidly narrowed. The rest followed quickly: Tasmania was soon undersold in her own markets. The great State-machinery connected with the convict system being now stopped or greatly reduced, the Government class diminished in importance: the influx of fresh criminals ceasing, and an exodus of many of the old ones setting in to the goldfields, there was a disturbance of the balance between labour and capital in favour of labour: the tone as well as the condition of the lower classes underwent an improvement, and they increased in importance: thus the upper class sank a little, the lower class rose. The great landholders lost their supply of cheap labour at the same time that they lost the best part of their market: from that moment they began to decline. On the other hand the free lower population increasing in numbers, and many having saved a little money either through the rise in wages or from a trip to the diggings, a class of small farmers sprang into existence, and commenced to compete on favourable terms with the great landholders: again the upper class sank a little, and the lower class rose. About this stage all the arable land which had been cleared and brought under the plough had had the cream taken off it. What remained was either second-rate, or densely timbered, or inaccessible in the existing state of the roads. The competition of Victoria had both raised the value of labour and diminished the value of produce. Tasmanian industry had received a severe blow, and the country was in no condition to open up fresh roads or clear fresh forests. No. thing remained but to go on culti vating the land already occupied and deteriorated. But how was this to be done? It could not be done (except in a few isolated cases) by rotation of crops and heavy manuring, because this implies the profitable fattening of stock, and stock in the neigh bouring colonies could be fattened on their rich natural pastures for next to nothing, and imported at a price that defied home competition. All that could well be done-all that was done generally-was to go on cultivating each field on a farm in succession, leaving the other fields to rest and recruit in the interval. But this primitive ar rangement required for even mo derate success that labour, expensive as it was, should be economised to the utmost; in other words, that the farmer should do the most of it himself; and it afforded very little opening for the investment of capital, which readily found more profitable employment in the adjacent, more highly favoured colonies. But it might be supposed that the system of farming might have been improved in many ways to meet the altered state of things, and that labour and capital might have been skilfully concentrated on a small surface, since it was no longer possible to spread them cheaply over a large surface. In a few cases they could be, and were concentrated; but generally speaking, they could not; certainly they were not; the few attempts made were not encouraging in their results, and the reasons, it would seem, were these: Concentration in farming, to be profitable, requires before all things a clear field: either the soil must be free of natural obstructions, or those obstructions must be removable at a small cost. Stones and stumps (or heavy timber of any kind) are alike fatal to it: the first preclude depth of tillage and destroy the tools, and so prevent the improvement of instruments; and the second not only destroy the tools, but forbid cultivation in straight lines, without which you can make little progress in the improvement of processes. Now stones and timber are two of the most strongly marked features of Tasmania: hence instruments and processes alike were here compelled to retain in great measure their primitive simplicity. In a sketch like this it is of course impossible to assign all the reasons; it must suffice to indicate the most important. Again, most improvements, especially mechanical ones, require a wide field of operations to repay their cost: each can generally perform but one operation, and requires therefore not only a clear field in each spot, but many such spots in one neighbourhood; in other words, the arable land must VOL. III.-NO. XVII. NEW SERIES. be massed in considerable tracts, and the farmers must either farm on a large scale, or be packed sufficiently close to co-operate easily. But Tasmania is a broken country; the land lies in small patches here and there, separated by steep hills, rugged roads, and thick forests; transit is difficult, and cooperation on any efficient scale impossible. Hence farming, being reduced to the employment of rude instruments and simple processes, is fast falling into the hands of an uneducated and impecunious class; and almost the whole population are farmers, or, as smiths, carriers, storemen, &c., are closely connected with farming. Every year this process advances with increasing rapidity; the labourer's labour is worth less to the capitalist and more to himself; the large landholders are disappearing fast; the small are rising into power; they are the councillors in all the municipalities; they form an increasing proportion of the members of Parliament; they rule the elections. They are rising like a tide, and will soon not only overpower but swallow up all the other classes. There is a certain rude comfort, but no material advance of prosperity, and a decline of refinement. The moral and political development coincides with the industrial. The different centres of production are isolated from each other by the broken character of the country. Farm lies apart from farm, and district from district; there are no great navigable rivers; the soil along the coasts is generally barren, and the growing poverty of the people hinders the improvement of the roads; rates are unpopular and difficult to levy. Isolation breeds petty ideas and narrow views; local interests overpower national interests; neighbours intermarry all round, and family clanship is added to provincial localism; there is a rapid amal TT gamation of all classes; for in each district all classes are forced for society's sake to mingle freely; the sons of gentlemen are thus inferior to their parents, the sons of artisans and petty tradesmen superior to theirs; and as each district is but a type of all the rest, the amalgamation of classes becomes national. There is a gradual growth of local good feeling and of a quiet, jogtrot morality, not high-toned, but decent. Even the old political animosities, relics of a bygone state of things, are dying out fast; only one or two of the old bitter partisans survive. Judging by present tendencies, not many years will elapse before the Tasmanian settler becomes one of the most marked national types existing. With little opportunity for progress, he will become averse to change, and will be strongly conservative. Secure of moderate comfort, undisturbed by excitement, and living under the eye of his whole petty neighbourhood, he will be quiet and orderly. Consisting of but one class, and being therefore on an equality with all his neighbours, he will be democratic. Nations are like water; when they cease to flow onward they stagnate: the river bed changes to a marsh—a waste of scattered pools. Two causes have contributed to bring this about in Tasmania. Its head waters have been partially dried up, and other channels have drained its waters away. This is not its fault, but its misfortune. Tasmania has made a gallant struggle against adversity; all honour to her children for it. And yet, for all that, the old taunt of Sleepy Hollow' applied to her is coming true, for destiny is stronger than man. As the old landed proprietors disappear, and capital migrates to more favourable fields; as farming retrogrades and roads wear out, not from excessive traffic, but from the winter rains and the inefficient repairs; as competition narrows her market more and more, enterprise will die out, and political stagnation will follow industrial. At present as a last resource the Tasmanian has pinned his faith to legislative action; he looks to Government for his regeneration, and is ready to plunge into any mad scheme for his country's development; but this will pass away. When he finds that no legislative dodge will avail to entice immigrants to a country where the inhabitants themselves cannot find sufficient employment, but have to migrate yearly; nor capital to a rugged, broken country where the returns to industry must necessarily be less than in the fair, fat, level lands close by; nor even that a railway run through the eminently pastoral part of the country will succeed in welding together the scattered agricultural centres; and further that they are too small, too poor, and too scattered to be worth the cost of welding; when he has tried all these and other plans on which he is now intent, and finds that they lead but to disappointment and impoverishment, then will come the reaction, then will you not easily get him to put his hand in his pocket for any national undertaking, then will his conservatism shine forth in strong contrast to his Victorian neighbour, and he will be as intensely sus picious of State enterprises as he is now intensely credulous. Few now dispute that the phy. sical conditions of a country mainly determine the industrial, and the industrial to a great extent the political: other influences contribute, but this is the main order. The process is governed by a fixed law, the law of natural selection, by which every organism, whether it be an animal or a plant, an individual or a community, tends to take its form and structure, its habits and character, from surrounding circumstances, and to fit itself to the conditions of its exist ence, whether these be favourable or unfavourable. The political conditions and tendencies the deciphering and description of which have been attempted, are as it were the clay in which our countrymen in Australia are planted, the breezes that blow about them. Their effect or resultant is what in slang phrase is called the Spirit of the Age. But unless man is a vegetable, unless communities are crops, unless history is the bare description of the combined effect upon him of certain meteorological and geological conditions, the spirit of the age is not the master of the spirit of man. Rather is history the record of the struggle of man, successfully or unsuccessfully, against the spirit of the age, against the force of circumstances restricting, confining, dragging down. To imagine some of the drawbacks, pitfalls, impediments of a new community, separated by thousands of miles from the Old World, is surely not very difficult. No local history and associations, no historic painting, architecture, or memorials of the past-the proportion of the upper class so small as to indicate retrogression rather than advance in refinement scarcely anything for the mind to occupy itself with, except to labour for the meat that perishes. of the colonies, to disclaim all responsibility for them? It does not indeed openly express its desire to be separated from them, but practically it has been showing its real opinion, and bringing about this result by acts the significance and effects of which cannot be mistaken, by the absence of any cordial expressions of pride or satisfaction in the possession of colonies; worse than this, in the case of New Zealand by charges and recriminations against the colonists which were demonstrably inaccurate and unjust. The little bands of English soldiers, too small to be any material expense (and that expense, such as it was, being in almost every instance borne by the colony), but important as a nucleus for the training and leading of the colonial forces in case of emergency, and much more important as being to the colonies what the flag is to the regiment, the sign and symbol of loyalty and union, have been withdrawn amid regret generally expressed, and felt much more deeply than it was expressed, for there was a certain proud fear lest such expression should be misconstrued. The link is not quite broken yet. Evidence of the strong attachment to the mother country is abundant. In the remotest hut, far up in the bush, of the old convict shepherd you may generally see the wooden slab walls papered, not with colonial prints and illustrations (common enough now), but with the home views and incidents and ceremonials and portraits which make the Illustrated London News the most popular newspaper in every quarter of the globe where Englishmen are to be found. Surely the old country can still do someIs thing for its colonies-can at any rate leave off doing what has been too much done already. Has the Queen's sovereignty, the close union with the home country, no power for good on communities in this stage of development? the English Government, instead of making itself intimately acquainted with the characteristics and wants SINCE EDUCATION IN THE NAVY. INCE the year 1857, in which the Council of Military Education was appointed, there has been a continual development of the educational system for officers of the English Army. Military education has been carefully watched over, both by the country and also by superior officers of the Army, from that date; and, in the very lucid, liberal, and practical First Report' of the Royal Commission appointed to enquire into the state of that education, published in 1869, we have a solemn approval of the aims and endeavours of the last twelve years for the culture of military officers. We may surely ask then, what has the country required in naval officers, and what machinery have the officers of the Navy demanded, for the education of their own service in the same period? and what has been done to fit naval officers for the scientific warfare which will hereafter win the day, no less in sea fights than in a battle on shore? This question may be answered in a few words. No list of educational establishments exists for the Navy, like that which appears on the first page as the Report of the Military Commission. There, two colleges, and eight establishments for special instruction, attest the desire of the sister service to possess a thoroughly instructed body of officers, as well as the approval of the country of the appropriation of large sums to that object. We have for the Navy a floating college-the Britannia, where boys are taught from the age of twelve to fourteen; a school of gunnery, where lieutenants of ages varying generally from twenty-two to twenty-seven may, if they desire it, enjoy an admirable year's training; and a college at Portsmouth, where officers of the ranks of Captain and Commander, of ages varying gene rally from twenty-six to forty, may amuse themselves by mumbling mathematics for a year or so, when on half-pay. Besides these regular establishments, some instruction is given by naval instructors, who are borne in sea-going ships, and who, during three to four years of each midshipman's career, between fourteen and eighteen years of age, snatch such moments as they can from the duties of the ship, to prevent the mathematics and navigation which were acquired in the Britannia, from being entirely forgotten. Quite recently, the first of these four years has been passed in a ship set apart, where the ordinary duties and routine have been more adapted to continuation of study, and where more masters are engaged than in regular sea-going ships. Those who know the superiority of highly instructed officers, and have understood, in the war lately raging, that cultivated intelligence has been the master and not the slave of system, will agree with me in deploring the want of instruction among officers in our Navy, and the poor prospects which the puny though expensive plans to which I have referred afford of producing an efficient body of officers hereafter. To those who do not appreciate our needs, I must offer an assu rance, founded on some experience and thought, that the existing instruction of naval officers is small, and that the prospects for the future are indifferent; and in order that the proper value may be assigned to my assertion, I have not hesitated to append my name to this paper on its publication. I intend to appeal to my brotherofficers, and to present my views in detail to them, in another place; but, as I am now addressing many |